VietNamNet Bridge – “I wondered if the Vietnamese people would accept me. Would the soldiers who fought against us believe that we now wanted to shake hands and work together?”
Clinton’s daring decision
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Former Ambassador Peterson and Senator John Mc Cain in Hanoi (photo Reuters). |
Pete Peterson was an American congressman. Before that, he was a naval pilot who was shot down over Vietnam and incarcerated as a prisoner of war for several years. And then, in 1997, he returned to Hanoi as the first American ambassador after the US established relations with the Democratic Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
He’s back in Hanoi again, this time at the invitation of the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry to attend a seminar reviewing fifteen years of Vietnam-US relations.
VietNamNet reporter Xuan Linh made an appointment with Peterson via email. The former ambassador still stays at the Hilton Hanoi Hotel whenever he returns to Hanoi. “I don’t remember how many times I’ve stayed here now! It seems almost like home!” he said.
On his first ‘visit,’ Peterson was a guest of the State for six and one-half years, held with other captured pilots at Hoa Lo prison in downtown Hanoi. He made a second visit in 1992. Getting here the second time, thirteen years ago, wasn’t so easy.
In the early 1990’s, Peterson was among the handful of American congressmen who campaigned for normalization with Vietnam while the US political environment was still cool to that idea.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton lifted the economic embargo against Vietnam. “That was a historic decision,” Peterson said, “and a risky one. We couldn’t be sure if the American people would accept it or not, but it was necessary to put the US-Vietnam relations on the right track.”
Would he be welcomed?
Peterson was nominated to serve as America’s first ambassador. After his appointment was approved by the American Senate, he had to face a lot of challenges. His biggest worry? “I wondered if the Vietnamese people would accept me.”
“How could I tell Vietnamese veterans of the war that the US still cares about Vietnam? That we wanted to shake hands and work together, after we brought so many soldiers to this country, after we dropped so many bombs here, after millions of casualties? Would they believe me?”
Peterson recalls his first impressions of Hanoi: citizens all using locally made goods like inexpensive sandals; everyone on bicycles; a bicycle repairman on every corner, perhaps selling gas on the side in litre bottles. “Nothing was modern at that time. Hanoi in 1997 was not much different from 1992,” he said.
The former ambassador recalls travelling to 58 provinces and cities in Vietnam to meet with Vietnamese people. He recalls going to his to his office on Hanoi’s Lang Ha street by bike and later by motorbike, just like the Vietnamese people.
The greatest accomplishment of Peterson’s tenure as American ambassador was the signing of the Vietnam-US Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA), the pact that opened the doors of both nations to each others’ goods.
Since those difficult times, the US has become Vietnam’s most important export market. Post-war issues like Agent Orange/dioxin have been progressively solved based on constructive attitudes by both sides. Many big American investors are now established in Vietnam.
“The changes in the two countries’ relations in these 15 years are really impressive,” Peterson says. “As Foreign Minister [Nguyen Co] Thach used to say, Vietnam is at last in the eyes of Americans “no longer a war, but a country.” Vietnam’s role in the world is growing steadily. Now it is serving both as a member of the US Security Council and as the current ASEAN Chairman. Americans have a broader view of Vietnam now. Even the views of our Vietnamese-American population, people who emigrated at the end of the war, have become broader.”
“There are still challenges in the relations between US and Vietnam,” Peterson stressed. “We shouldn’t fool ourselves that everything is just perfect. However, trade disputes over things like catfish and garments will be solved. The US needs to export more to Vietnam. There’s no hurry. We’ve got a big launching pad and there’s plenty of energy on both sides. Future generations will sustain this building process.”
